Opened 25 Years Ago: HEAT (12/15/1995)

 

HEAT
(US - 1995)
Directed by Michael Mann

HEAT opening in Toledo, OH on 12/15/1995

On Blu-ray/DVD: THE VANISHING (2019) and VOX LUX (2018)

THE VANISHING
(US/UK - 2019)

After the perfectly acceptable HUNTER KILLER tanked in theaters last fall, I said to a friend "Other than the next entry in the HAS FALLEN series, Gerard Butler's probably headed to VOD going forward." Cut to a little over two months later, and not only was Butler's next movie bowing on VOD, but it was also given an ignominious first-weekend-of-January dumping on top of it. Shot in 2017 as KEEPERS, THE VANISHING (not to be confused with two previous George Sluizer thrillers with the same title) isn't one of Butler's formulaic action vehicles, but it does find the star (and one of 28 credited producers) in Serious Actor mode in the vein of the underseen MACHINE GUN PREACHER. Inspired by the 1900 "Flannan Isle Mystery," where three lighthouse keepers disappeared without a trace from a distant island off the coast of Scotland, THE VANISHING moves the setting to the 1930s and proceeds on pure speculation. The film could've gone in any number of directions--theories of the disappearance range from one of the three men going insane and killing the other two; a sea serpent; and an even an alien abduction--but it opts for a character-driven mash-up of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE and Danny Boyle's breakthrough SHALLOW GRAVE with a bit of a John Carpenter siege scenario for a little while.

Arriving on Flannan Isle for a six-week stint of running the lighthouse and other various maintenance duties, boss Thomas Marshall (Peter Mullan), James Ducat (Butler), and young apprentice/good-natured hazing target Donald McArthur (newcomer Connor Swindells, currently on Netflix's SEX EDUCATION) find their dull routine broken up one morning by the appearance a crashed boat and a body washed ashore on the rocks below. Donald is lowered down to check him and even though he says the man (Gary Kane) isn't breathing, he comes to and attacks Donald, who then bashes his head in with a rock in self-defense. In the crashed boat is a locked trunk that Thomas opens to discover it's filled with an untold fortune in gold bars. James and Donald think they've struck it rich, but Thomas urges caution, reminding them "Somebody's gonna come looking for this guy." Sure enough, two men, Locke (Soren Malling) and Boor (GAME OF THRONES' Olafur Darri Olafsson), show up on the island and start asking questions. It isn't long before there's two more dead bodies and increasing paranoia over more people coming and a growing mistrust of one another over concerns about making off with the gold and who'll keep their mouth shut about it. Given the speculation about what could've gone down on Flannan Isle in 1900--and to this day, no one knows for sure--THE VANISHING certainly takes an unexpected approach when it could've been just as easy to get a movie about a sea monster or aliens made. It benefits from three strong performances by its stars, particularly Mullan as the conflicted Thomas--considered the likely killer by historians who support the "one man went insane killed the other two" theory--still grieving over the deaths of his wife and daughters (and he won't say how they died). But in the context of the film, it's Butler's James who really cracks up and folds under pressure, which allows the actor to stretch a bit when he's usually the hero. THE VANISHING is worth a look for fans of Butler and the great character actor Mullan (SESSION 9), but the pace is a bit too slow (probably why Lionsgate relegated it to VOD), and it starts stumbling in the home stretch when it really matters most, leading to an abrupt and not-very-satisfying conclusion. (R, 107 mins)




VOX LUX
(US - 2018)

If Lars von Trier attempted to make his own warped version of A STAR IS BORN and was completely in over his head and absolutely terrible at his job, it would probably come out looking a lot like VOX LUX, the latest from actor-turned-filmmaker Brady Corbet. In his acting days, Corbet paid his dues with stints on 24 and with guest spots in the LAW & ORDER universe, but instead of going the mainstream route, he was driven to take roles in films by provocateurs like von Trier (MELANCHOLIA), Gregg Araki (MYSTERIOUS SKIN), Michael Haneke (the remake of FUNNY GAMES), and Olivier Assayas (CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA). I've not seen Corbet's 2016 directing debut THE CHILDHOOD OF A LEADER, but VOX LUX is a film that thinks it's deep and meaningful, but is really just shallow, exploitative, self-indulgent drivel that feels like the kind of nonsense that VELVET BUZZSAW was trying to lampoon. Corbet may have spent time observing and picking the brains of his auteur heroes, but he doesn't seem to have learned anything from them beyond surface imitation. You know you're in for an ordeal when the film opens with von Trier-esque title cards like "Prelude: 1999" followed by "Act I: Genesis (2000-01)." There's also wry and sardonic narration by frequent von Trier star Willem Dafoe, just like the kind John Hurt provided in von Trier's DOGVILLE and MANDERLAY. In an effectively harrowing opening sequence set in 1999, Staten Island teenager Celeste Montgomery (Raffey Cassidy of THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER) gets a bullet lodged in her spine when she's the sole survivor of a shooting rampage by troubled outcast and character-name-that-could-only-exist-in-a-shitty-movie-like-this, Cullen Active (Logan Riley Bruner), who mows down her entire classroom, and it's all downhill from there. During her long recovery, after which she's still able to walk as long as the bullet doesn't dislodge, she attends a candlelight vigil and performs a song written by her older sister Ellie (Stacy Martin, who played the young Charlotte Gainsbourg in von Trier's NYMPHOMANIAC) that captures the nation's attention and draws interest from various record companies. She gets a manager (Jude Law), a publicist (Jennifer Ehle), and a choreographer, and soon enough, she's about to become teen pop sensation "Celeste," recording songs in NYC and Europe, and then the sisters are partying hard and hooking up with guys in L.A. in the early morning hours of 9/11, when narrator Dafoe gravely intones "Celeste's loss of innocence curiously mirrored that of the nation."

I would pay to see the look on Willem Dafoe's face when he was standing in the recording booth and was handed that line. It's impossible to take anything VOX LUX offers seriously after that, but at about the midway point, there's a 16-year time jump or, as Corbet (who probably now pronounces it "Cor-bay") puts it, "Act II: Regenesis 2017," where we're introduced to 31-year-old Celeste, and the film achieves the unthinkable and somehow gets even worse. Much of that is due to a career-worst performance by Natalie Portman, who takes over the role while Cassidy now plays her teenage daughter Albertine. Adult Celeste is now a Madonna/Lady Gaga-esque pop culture icon, constantly stalked by the tabloids and addled by booze, drugs, public meltdowns, and other scandals. As she prepares for a sold-out comeback concert at a Staten Island arena, her always-enabling manager (still played by Law, who's pretty much Alan Bates in THE ROSE) informs her that terrorists dressed as the dancers in the music video of one of her early hits have just committed a horrific mass shooting on a beach in Croatia. She has nothing but resentment and scorn for the long-suffering Ellie, who's done most of the heavy lifting both writing her songs for her and raising Albertine. It all culminates in a triumphant performance by Celeste in front of her hometown "angels" in an interminable finale featuring songs by Sia that sound like they came from the bottom of her slush pile. Corbet's ham-fisted, would-be commentary on everything from school shootings to 9/11 to the Price of Fame while feebly trying to emulate von Trier and others borders on outright poseurdom, and while Martin and Cassidy manage to emerge generally unscathed (though Cassidy's British accent slips through quite a bit in the first half), a shrill and over-the-top Portman, stuck playing one of the most grating, off-putting, and aggressively unlikable characters in any movie from last year, is just embarrassingly bad. Check out her overly-affected Noo Yawk screech when she's ranting at Ellie or at restaurant managers or at a journalist (Christopher Abbott), or waxing philosophic over society's ills and "ultra mega triple hi-def TVs" and "our intimate knowledge of the commitment to the lowest common denominator." Barely released by Neon and grossing just $730,000, VOX LUX isn't a serious artistic statement by a bold new voice in filmmaking. It's smug, self-impressed, vacuous bullshit. Can someone tell Brady Corbet that masturbation is usually something done in private? (R, 114 mins)

In Theaters: ANNIHILATION (2018)

ANNIHILATION
(US/UK - 2018)

Written and directed by Alex Garland. Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Oscar Isaac, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, Benedict Wong, David Gyasi, Sonoya Mizuno. (R, 115 mins)

Though he initially made his name as an acclaimed author with his 1996 novel The Beach, Alex Garland has become much better-known in recent years for his contributions to sci-fi cinema. He didn't pen the screenplay adaptation for Danny Boyle's 2000 film of THE BEACH, but he did team with the TRAINSPOTTING director on two future projects, scripting 2003's zombie apocalypse trailblazer 28 DAYS LATER and 2007's underrated environmental sci-fi gem SUNSHINE. Garland also scripted Mark Romanek's 2010 future dystopia drama NEVER LET ME GO, based on Kazuo Ichiguro's 2005 novel, and Pete Travis' 2012 cult classic reboot DREDD. But it was with his 2015 directing debut EX MACHINA that Garland really gained some serious momentum, including an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. EX MACHINA brings us to his first major-studio filmmaking effort, the $40 million ANNIHILATION, an adaptation of the first novel in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy. Garland uses the book for the core concept and the structure, but largely takes it in his own direction, and anyone who's seen EX MACHINA or the films he's scripted will see recurring themes and ideas. As shaped by Garland, ANNIHILATION is densely-packed and thought-provoking, and while the utilization of ideas from films that have come before--the 1982 version of THE THING, EVENT HORIZON, THE RELIC, THE DESCENT, various old-school Cronenberg-derived body horrors, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, ARRIVAL (which was hitting theaters when this was in production in 2016), and even a mutant bear on loan from 1979's PROPHECY--do give the story mechanics a too familiar feel at times that keeps it just shy of perfection, ANNIHILATION's real success lies not with the What, but with the Why, the How, the Who, and the When. Garland introduces some heady, hard-science ideas throughout, and it's refreshing to see a horror film trust and respect its audience enough to refuse to spell everything out for them. ANNIHILATION expects you to pay attention and keep up (multiple viewings are likely required). This trust and respect Garland placed in the audience caused friction with Skydance CEO and co-executive producer David Ellison, who was concerned about a disastrous test screening and complained that the film was "too intellectual." When Garland refused to make any changes and co-executive producer Scott Rudin remained supportive of the filmmaker's vision and backed him up (Rudin had final cut written into his deal, essentially pulling rank on Ellison), Skydance partner and distributor Paramount--perhaps out of spite or fearing they had another CLOVERFIELD PARADOX on their hands--sold the distribution rights to Netflix everywhere in the world but North America and China, then decreased the US theatrical screen count to around 2000.

Lena (Natalie Portman) is an Army vet and Johns Hopkins cellular biologist with a focus on cancer research. Other than her work, she's largely withdrawn from the world in the year since her career military husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) vanished along with other soldiers during a secret mission to a location he couldn't divulge. Out of nowhere, Kane returns home confused and distant and begins coughing up blood. A military convoy intercepts the ambulance and whisks Lena and Kane to a top-secret compound constructed at a location off the coast of the southern US termed "Area X." A comatose, quarantined Kane is on a ventilator and Lena is interrogated by Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a psychiatrist stationed at Area X. Outside the compound is a translucent, floating mass called "The Shimmer." Described by Ventress as "a religious or an alien event," it first appeared three years earlier and has slowly been growing and expanding, even taking over a small town that was evacuated under the pretext of a chemical spill. No one who's gone into The Shimmer has emerged except Kane, and prior to his coma, he had no recollection of his time inside, what happened, or how long he was there. Ventress is planning an expedition into The Shimmer with a trio of contracted personnel--paramedic Anya (Gina Rodriguez), physicist Josie (Tessa Thompson), and geologist Sheppard (Tuva Novotny)--that eventually includes Lena. Once inside The Shimmer, what feels like a few hours ends up being at least several days, as they've already gone through several meal rations and have no recollection eating or even setting up camp. The area is a vast forest filled with a mash-up of flora that don't exist in the same family. Josie is attacked by an alligator that's shot dead by Lena, and upon examination, has teeth that belong to the shark family and exhibits other signs of DNA that it shouldn't. As they venture deeper into The Shimmer, time blurs more and strange sights abound--deer with plants sprouting from their antlers, trees and plants growing in the shape of human bodies, Anya noticing her fingerprints fluidly moving on her fingertips, and the discovery of a memory card left behind by Kane's group at an abandoned Army base--as Josie theorizes that The Shimmer is prismically "refracting" everything contained in it, absorbing the DNA of whatever life forms have entered and creating an almost constantly-shifting change in them.

Things go much deeper--and get a lot worse--for the expedition, and Garland keeps the audience on its toes by the very gradual and subtle reveal of information, whether it's the framing device of Lena being debriefed by a mysterious, Hazmat-suited figure (Benedict Wong) in an observation room or the life choices made by the five women that led them on what's ultimately termed a "suicide mission" ("We're all damaged goods," Sheppard confides to Lena). Garland isn't afraid make Lena a very flawed character and even risks turning the audience against her, depending which way you read a key development. The film takes a downright trippy turn into Kubrick "2001 Stargate" territory in the last 20 or so minutes, leading to an ambiguous ending that's riddled with multiple interpretations and prompting reflection upon a number of small but very significant details parsed throughout (keep an eye on that ouroboros tattoo). While Garland goes for a couple of easy jump scares, where he really succeeds with ANNIHILATION beyond the implications of what The Shimmer is capable of doing, is by creating one of the most ominous and unsettling vibes that I've felt from a horror film in quite some time, probably since THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER, so much so that even the recurrent use of Crosby Stills & Nash's "Helplessly Hoping" starts to make you uneasy. This is an uncomfortable film whose images and soundscapes burrow under your skin and haunt you, with at least two nerve-shredding sequences of extended creepiness that aren't easily shaken. Whatever commercial potential Paramount thought ANNIHILATION might've had is irrelevant after the opening weekend. Mainstream audiences probably won't be very receptive to it, but Garland's film--pretty close to an instant genre classic--is a reminder that there was once a time when major studios welcomed creative artists with open arms and championed intelligent and challenging films that might stand the test of time rather than merely clean up at the box office for a week or two and quickly fade from memory. It will probably be out of theaters in two weeks, but ANNIHILATION is a film that's playing the long game, and it's one that fans will be discussing and debating for years to come. And coupled with EX MACHINA and his screenwriting resume before, it unquestionably establishes Alex Garland as a leading figure in sci-fi cinema today.

On DVD/Blu-ray: SONG TO SONG (2017) and SALT AND FIRE (2017)

SONG TO SONG
(US - 2017)

After taking 20 years off between 1978's DAYS OF HEAVEN and 1998's THE THIN RED LINE, Terrence Malick's directorial output in the 2010s is coming at a furious pace that rivals Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood. Counting the 40-minute IMAX film VOYAGE OF TIME, SONG TO SONG is his sixth movie of this decade, and the final part of a loose trilogy that began with 2013's TO THE WONDER and 2016's KNIGHT OF CUPS. Shot back-to-back with KNIGHT OF CUPS way back in 2012 and endlessly tinkered with by its maker, SONG TO SONG takes the first-world ennui of CUPS' self-absorbed Los Angeles navel-gazers and moves them to the hipster mecca of Austin, TX for maximum insufferability. Any hopes of Malick turning this into his own version of NASHVILLE are dashed the moment the film begins and it's the same kind of pained, whispered, emo journal entry voiceover by a dull ensemble of ciphers played by actors who, for some reason, still want to say they were in a Malick movie. If there's a central character--none of them are referred to by name--it's Faye (Rooney Mara), a waify aspiring musician who's seen onstage with a band a couple of times and seems to be friends with Patti Smith (as herself), but we never really see her working on music or practicing with the rest of the band. Faye's involved with Cook (Michael Fassbender), who's some kind of music industry A&R asshole (I guess), and BV (Ryan Gosling), another aspiring musician who doesn't seem to do much playing or songwriting and, like everyone in this film, appears to have significant disposable income. Faye drifts between both men, and during some downtime, the psychologically abusive Cook hooks up with teacher-turned-diner waitress Rhonda (Natalie Portman), and even coerces Rhonda and Faye to join him in a threesome. Faye also gets involved with Parisian transplant Zoey (Berenice Marlohe) and BV with Amanda (Cate Blanchett), while almost everyone gets their turn at center stage for some of Malick's signature vacuous ruminations of the privileged and aimless.  To wit:

• "I thought we could roll and tumble. Live from song to song. Kiss to kiss."

• "I love the pain. It feels like life."

• "I'm low. I'm like the mud."

• "Foolish me. Devil." 

• "I was once like you. To think what I once was. What I am now."

• "I played with the flame of life." 

• "I feel like we're so...connected. I can't really understand. It's like..."

• "The world built a fence around you. How do you get through?  Connect?" 

• "You burn me. Who are you?"

• "I need to go back and start over."

Malick should've taken that last sentiment to heart. Like KNIGHT OF CUPS, SONG TO SONG shows the revered filmmaker continuing his ongoing descent into self-parody. This does not look like the work of a 73-year-old auteur who's been making movies for 45 years. If this same movie was presented by a film school student, it would be dismissed as self-indulgent, adolescent drivel. But Malick's defenders continue to give him a pass and insist that his detractors--a contingent of former acolytes that's growing with each new Malick journey up his own ass--just can't grasp the level of genius that's being gifted to them. Bullshit. Malick was poised to stake his claim as the Greatest American Filmmaker when Stanley Kubrick died, and brilliant films like 2005's THE NEW WORLD and 2011's THE TREE OF LIFE certainly made a strong case for his inheriting the title. But over the course of TO THE WONDER, KNIGHT OF CUPS, and now SONG TO SONG, Malick has offered enough evidence to suggest that the emperor has no clothes, and rather than the new Kubrick, he's really just the American Jean-Luc Godard, another filmmaking legend who's abandoned any semblance of narrative cohesion and for whom any negative criticism is strictly verboten. Malick goes into these films with no clear vision, instead hoping it comes together in post with the help of eight (!) credited editors. And, as was the case with WONDER and CUPS, a ton of name actors got cut out of the film when Malick decided they weren't needed, among them Christian Bale, Benicio del Toro, Haley Bennett (THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN), Boyd Holbrook (LOGAN), and Angela Bettis (MAY), along with artists Iron & Wine, Fleet Foxes, and Arcade Fire (when asked about this film in a 2013 interview after shooting wrapped, even Fassbender said he wasn't sure if he'd end up being in it). Iggy Pop and John Lydon turn up in SONG TO SONG, along with Smith, who gives the film one of its few legitimately worthwhile dramatic moments when she fondly speaks of her late husband, MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith. Alternating between wide-angle and fish-eye lenses and often using GoPro cameras to maximize the faux-experimental aura, Malick and renowned cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki did some extensive shooting at the 2012 Austin City Limits and Fun Fun Fun fests, which gave Fassbender a chance to wrestle with Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea and let Malick waste some screen time on that. For all the impact that the Austin events brought to the film, Malick may as well have shot scenes at that year's Gathering of the Juggalos. Holly Hunter turns up briefly as Rhonda's mom and Val Kilmer does a walk-through as a wildman rock star, onstage with the Black Lips at the Fun Fun Fun fest, cutting off clumps of his hair with a Bowie knife and chainsawing an amp during a live show while yelling "I got some uranium!" Malick would've had a significantly more entertaining movie if he'd just followed Kilmer around and filmed him being weird for two hours.

It's also nice to see Malick has entered his "pervy old man" phase, with lingering, leering shots of Mara and Marlohe caressing each other, Zoey kissing Faye's hand while she masturbates, and Cook in bed with two nude escorts in what looks like an outtake from the harrowing Fassbender sex addiction drama SHAME. It's easy to assume from his last few films that Malick has forgotten how people really communicate and interact and maybe doesn't get out much anymore, and from the looks of some of the more sordid scenes in SONG TO SONG, he's apparently just discovered Cinemax. It's possible that Malick is putting a stop to this myopic nonsense with his next film, the German-set WWII drama RADEGUND, due out later this year. It stars (for now) August Diehl, Matthias Schoenaerts, Bruno Ganz, and the late Michael Nyqvist, and by all accounts, it's actually Malick doing a commercial film with a straightforward narrative. It's about time, because SONG TO SONG is a fucking embarrassment. (R, 129 mins)

SALT AND FIRE
(Germany/US/Mexico/France/UK - 2017)

A companion piece of sorts to his 2016 Netflix documentary INTO THE INFERNO (which was shot second but released first), SALT AND FIRE provides further evidence that, much like his 1970s New German Cinema contemporary Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog's strengths no longer lie in narrative filmmaking.  A visionary German auteur and one of cinema's most beloved eccentric raconteurs, Herzog is a tireless workaholic whose curiosity of all subjects has led him to create some of the most captivating documentaries of the modern era, including 2005's GRIZZLY MAN, 2007's ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, and 2010's CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS. He once made brilliant, groundbreaking dramas like 1972's AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD and 1982's FITZCARRALDO, but after his superb 2006 Vietnam POW drama RESCUE DAWN, his gonzo 2009 reimagining of BAD LIEUTENANT, and his experimental 2010 misfire (though it has its admirers) MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE?, Herzog's most recent forays into scripted cinema have fallen flat: his Nicole Kidman-headlined historical epic QUEEN OF THE DESERT took four years to get released in the US in April 2017, the same day as the shot-in-2015 SALT AND FIRE. MY SON, MY SON was bad, but SALT AND FIRE is easily the worst Herzog film I've seen, a deadening, ponderous slog with muddled, ham-fisted admonishments about environmental issues and filled with characters who never once speak like human beings who know how to interact with one another. Much of the dialogue sounds like stuff Herzog would've written for himself to narrate in a documentary and honestly, it would play significantly better coming out of his mouth instead of a monotone, somnambulant Michael Shannon, one of the great character actors around but who's having a really off day here. Imagine the curiously soothing tone of Herzog uttering such musings as "Truth is the only daughter of time," "Here lies a monster on the verge of waking," or "The noblest place for a man to die is the place he dies the deadest," and you've got a movie. But when those same lines are mumbled by Shannon, they sound like the pretentious ramblings of the world's most depressed Bond villain.

As SALT AND FIRE opens, scientist Dr. Laura Sommerfeld (Veronica Ferres) is on a UN fact-finding mission in South America with two colleagues--horndog Italian Dr. Fabio Cavani (Gael Garcia Bernal) and stoical German Dr. Arnold Meier (Volker Zack Michalowski)--to look into an impending ecological disaster at the Diablo Blanco salt flats (played by Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni). They're left at an abandoned airport and abducted by armed, masked men and taken to an undisclosed location where Sommerfeld is granted an audience with mastermind Matt Riley (Shannon), the CEO of a mysterious corporation known as "The Consortium." While Cavani and Meier are sidelined in the shitter for the rest of the film after secretly being given a powerful laxative (one of the film's several ill-advised attempts at levity; c'mon, Herzog...you're better than poop jokes), Riley and his chief associate Krauss (theoretical physicist Jonathan Krauss as himself) take Sommerfeld into the middle of the Diablo Blanco, where Riley informs her that a lake that was there just a few decades ago is gone and that expanding Diablo Blanco threatens to reactivate a long-dormant volcano that could obliterate mankind ("It could be 20,000 years or it could be 20...but it will happen"). After confessing that it was his company's unethical, careless practices that brought this certain disaster on the world, he abandons her in the desert with two blind children, for whom she quickly adapts to the situation to be a protective mother figure while trying to ascertain the exact of Riley's actions. Ferres and Shannon aren't given characters to play but rather, talking points to recite, with Shannon's Riley coming off as particularly hectoring in a way that borders on mansplaining, considering Ferres' Sommerfeld is the top ecology expert in her field. Popular German actress Ferres delivers her lines in a stilted, halting way that sounds like she looped them in post-production, while Shannon comes off as so lifeless that you might think Herzog pulled a HEART OF GLASS on him. SALT AND FIRE is anti-entertainment of the highest order, a film that opens as a straightforward hostage drama and flirts with becoming a disaster movie before turning into an overbearing, finger-wagging lecture, and finally, an examination of a career woman finding her true inner self when, like the volcano, her long-dormant maternal instincts are reawakened (it's mentioned that Sommerfeld has a estranged daughter who's in the custody of her ex), along with signs of a budding romance with her kidnapper. It speaks to how random and disjointed SALT AND FIRE is that it's no less than three movies before it finally settles on being a fourth with a clumsy attempt to link motherhood with nurturing Mother Earth, a metaphor that's so ineptly handled by Herzog that it comes off as a passive-aggressive, context-free rebuking of the life choices of a world-renowned science professor that also has her succumbing to the charms (?) of her creepy, morose abductor. Herzog's rarely been as wrong-headed as he is here--he should've just made a documentary about the Salar de Uyuni salt flat and everything would've turned out better for everyone. (Unrated, 98 mins, also streaming on Netflix)

On DVD/Blu-ray: JACKIE (2016); PATERSON (2016); and MAX ROSE (2016)

JACKIE
(US/France/Chile/China - 2016)

Affected and mannered by design, Natalie Portman's feature-length impression of Jackie Kennedy carries this artsy, dream-like collage by acclaimed Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain (TONY MANERO, NERUDA). Taking place in the week after the assassination of JFK (Danish actor Caspar Phillipson), JACKIE is a largely experimental work that isn't concerned being a straightforward biopic, and that works in its favor about as often as it works against it. A framing device has Jackie being interviewed by a journalist (Billy Crudup) at the family home in Hyannis Port several days after her husband's funeral. She makes it clear from the outset that she won't indulge the obvious ("You want me to describe the sound the bullet made when it collided with my husband's skull?"), and she will shape the story and have final edit over what is written and presented to the public. From the moment LBJ (John Carroll Lynch) is sworn in on the flight back to D.C., a shell-shocked, blood-splattered Jackie is adamant about making sure her husband is honored and his public persona preserved. Whether she's planning his memorial or telling her story to the journalist, Jackie is constructing an image, that will shape the world's perception of herself and JFK for years to come. Her goal is to present to the world "the brief, shining moment that there was a Camelot," while acknowledging "There won't be another Camelot...not another Camelot."

As intricately constructed as its subject's public image, JACKIE is equal parts Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick. The often stream-of-consciousness monologues delivered by Jackie aren't nearly as wandering and meandering as more recent Malick, and the cold, clinical presentation and long tracking shots are straight out of Kubrick 101. Shooting in Super 16 gives the film a grainy and almost voyeuristic immediacy into Jackie's grief, but the more it goes on, the more ponderous it becomes. Larrain lets Mica Levi's Oscar-nominated score do a lot of the dramatic heavy lifting, and while there's a number of striking images throughout, JACKIE's insistence on keeping everyone--from its supporting characters to the audience watching--at a distance becomes a detriment. The script by Noah Oppenheim (whose two previous writing credits are THE MAZE RUNNER and ALLEGIANT) gets lost in frequently pretentious pontification, with Jackie telling a priest (the late John Hurt in one of his last roles; he died a month after the film's release) things like "The characters you read on the page become more real than the characters who stand beside us." In JACKIE's interpretation of its subject, the First Lady is someone who always seems to playing a part or playing to an audience ("I love crowds!" she tells JFK in a flashback), and to that extent, Portman's performance is remarkable in that it conveys that sense of deliberately manufactured artifice. It's nice that Larrain attempted something more than a cookie-cutter biopic, but in using such tactics, he never lets you in, and the large supporting cast--Hurt, Crudup, Lynch, Peter Sarsgaard as an unconvincing Bobby Kennedy, Greta Gerwig as White House Social Secretary and Jackie's friend Nancy Tuckerman, Richard E. Grant as Bill Walton--exists largely to listen to Jackie wax philosophical and marvel at Portman's uncanny interpretation with her clipped, airy inflections. JACKIE is ambitious and beautifully crafted, but Larrain's technique is too distant and clinical for its own good. (R, 100 mins)



PATERSON
(US/Germany/France - 2016)

A quiet film even by Jim Jarmusch standards, PATERSON is a low-key character piece focusing on a Paterson, NJ bus driver named Paterson (Adam Driver) and--it's never really specified--his wife or girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), and their English bulldog Marvin (a fine canine performance by eight-year-old Nellie, who was diagnosed with cancer during production and died shortly after filming). A creature of habit, Paterson wakes up every day between 6:10 and 6:15 am, eats a bowl of Cheerios, and walks to work. In his down time and on his lunch breaks, he writes poetry in a journal. When he gets home, Laura makes dinner and tells him about her day, which usually involves her constantly changing life goals ("I need to learn how to play the guitar so I can become a country singer and be as big as Tammy Wynette," she tells Paterson, who's obviously just hearing about this dream for the first time, right between her wanting to be a fashion designer, a painter, and hoping to start her own cupcake business), then he walks Marvin and stops at a neighborhood dive bar run by Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley), for one beer and some conversation before calling it a night. This is Paterson's daily routine, which we follow over the course of a week, and in the context of the film, we see little in the way of a social life (they go see ISLAND OF LOST SOULS at a revival house on Saturday) and nothing in the way of family or friends (a photo on a table tells us that Paterson is a former Marine). PATERSON is about finding heart and soul in the mundane and the everyday, whether it's Paterson being inspired by a box of Ohio Blue Tip matches or eavesdropping on slice-of-life passenger conversations while he's behind the wheel. To that extent, it feels a little like Wayne Wang and Paul Auster's 1995 arthouse hit SMOKE, but the daily repetition recalls Chantal Akerman's JEANNE DIELMAN and the general mood of the film comes off somewhat like Jarmusch's attempt at making a less-precious Wes Anderson film (the recurring use of twins gets a little too cute after a while). The atmosphere is intriguing--Jarmusch sets his scenes in old-school Jersey neighborhoods that have likely been unchanged for decades, and Paterson himself seems like a man not made for these times (he doesn't even have a cell phone). It's a film about the millions of average nobodies who have artistic ideas within them that need to come out but everyday life just happens. Flighty but loving Laura wants Paterson to publish his poetry, but he writes it mainly for himself. He's fine with that, and he's happy. There's a reverence for the history of Paterson, whether it's the invocation of revered Paterson-born poet William Carlos Williams, whose most well-known collection is titled Paterson, and in the framed photos of hometown heroes on the wall of Doc's bar. On a cursory glance, not much happens in PATERSON, but it very subtly sneaks up on you, as in a late sequence where Paterson, on one of his solitary walks, meets a kindred spirit in a traveler from Osaka (Masatoshi Nagase, who was in Jarmusch's MYSTERY TRAIN back in 1989) carrying a tattered Japanese translation of Paterson, that really carries some unexpected emotional resonance. (R, 118 mins)

MAX ROSE
(US - 2016)

Screened at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and shelved for three years until it hit a few theaters in the fall of 2016, MAX ROSE marks the first significant big-screen role for Jerry Lewis since 1995's little-seen FUNNY BONES. Lewis brings much emotion and poignancy to the title character, a forgotten jazz pianist who had a brief day in the sun in the late 1950s but never became a star. As MAX ROSE opens, 87-year-old Max is dealing with the death of Eva (Claire Bloom), his wife of 65 years. He's understandably hit hard by it ("I can't even remember my life without her," he says) and despite the doting attention of his adult granddaughter Annie (Kerry Bishe) and attempts at bonding from his somewhat estranged son Chris (Kevin Pollak), Max grows obsessed with something he uncovered in the days before Eva's death: a makeup compact with a hidden inscription from a "Ben," dated November 5, 1959, the day he was in across the country in a NYC studio cutting his only record. Max is haunted by the notion that Eva had a secret lover and questions the whether his marriage and his entire life has been a lie, even breaking down and airing this potentially dirty laundry during the eulogy at Eva's funeral. A health scare permanently sends cantankerous Max to a retirement home, where he's not enthused about knitting and cooking classes but finds some buddies in a likable trio of fellow old-timer widowers (played by Rance Howard, Lee Weaver, and legendary political satirist Mort Sahl, and watching guys like Sahl and Lewis riff provides some of MAX ROSE's best moments), but he can't get "Ben" out of his mind. When he eventually finds out who Ben is and that he's still alive (Dean Stockwell turns up in the third act), Max realizes he can't have any kind of closure until he gets to the bottom of Eva's relationship with him.

MAX ROSE was written and directed by Daniel Noah, a producer on recent notable cult films like TOAD ROAD and A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT. Noah based the Max Rose character on his own grandfather, so there's no doubting his sincerity in the project, which was probably key in getting an essentially retired Lewis onboard. While things take a decidedly predictable turn (there's obviously an explanation for the inscription and no way the film will turn the saintly Eva into a cheating wife) and grow increasingly maudlin in the home stretch, with a closing scene that's audience manipulation at its most shameless, it's hard to not like MAX ROSE. This is almost entirely due to the sentimentality of seeing Lewis in a starring role once again after all these years. Like Clint Eastwood in GRAN TORINO, it's a film that sinks or swims on its star, in each case a cultural icon with decades of familiarity working in his favor. Lewis is a joy to watch here, even if he's grown notoriously prickly and abrasive with age, and he's convincing and heartbreaking in the small, quiet moments where Noah really nails the emotional impact of losing someone after so long: Max sitting alone in the living room, the house eerily silent; or deciding it's time to throw out Eva's toothbrush and her things in the medicine cabinet; or spotting the book she was reading, left on the coffee table with its bookmark sticking out at the halfway point, and realizing she'll never finish it. This is the kind of film that probably would've gotten a big push a decade or two ago, with a sentimental Oscar nod for Lewis all but guaranteed. But after some significant retooling following its panned Cannes screening in 2013 (which resulted in Fred Willard being cut from the film completely, which may be a factor in its truncated running time), there's no place for something like MAX ROSE in today's market. Some movies skew old and still get wide releases (the recent Shirley MacLaine-starring THE LAST WORD and the new remake of GOING IN STYLE come to mind), but is anyone under 80 going to pay to see a new Jerry Lewis movie in 2016? And while there are no doubt a good number of tech-savvy geriatrics, how many are into streaming and VOD? My dad is 73 and shakes his head and makes a face like he's sniffing Limburger when you mention "streaming" to him. MAX ROSE isn't any great shakes, but it's awfully hard to dislike, and a must for Jerry Lewis fans...if they're even aware of its existence. (Unrated, 84 mins, also streaming on Netflix)

On DVD/Blu-ray: KNIGHT OF CUPS (2016) and 45 YEARS (2015)

KNIGHT OF CUPS
(US - 2016)

Terrence Malick makes movies for no one other than Terrence Malick, and by this point, you're either onboard with his improvisational, self-indulgent, stream-of-consciousness journeys up his own ass or you're not. So if you've been open to his increasingly prolific output in recent years or found him stretching well beyond the point of myopic self-parody, KNIGHT OF CUPS isn't going to do a thing to change your opinion. Similar to 2013's ponderous misfire TO THE WONDER--notable for being the first instance of some of his most devoted acolytes finally having the stones to admit he kinda lost them with this one--Malick continues to move away from the concept of narrative altogether in his presentation of Hollywood screenwriter Rick (Christian Bale, who worked with Malick on 2005's significantly better THE NEW WORLD), a man hopelessly lost in a suffocating malaise of L.A. ennui. No, KNIGHT OF CUPS isn't one of those bile-spewing insider takedowns of Hollywood but that might've actually been preferable. There's lots of scenes of Rick walking and driving around various obligatory recognizable locations (other than Bale, the most screen time goes to the 405 and some Death Valley wind turbines, and yes, at one point, he engages in some thousand-yard staring at the nearly bone-dry concrete of the L.A. River, whose appearance in a Los Angeles-set film is apparently required by law) and replaying the bad decisions and lost loves in his life. It's all accompanied by the expected ponderous, insufferable, pained-whisper narration by various characters that's become Malick's trademark (note: these make even less sense in context):

•  "Fragments...pieces of a man...where did I go wrong?" 

•  "I want you. Hold you. Have you. Mine."

•  "All those years...living the life of someone I didn't even know."

•  "You gave me peace. You gave me what the world can't give. Mercy. Love. Joy. All else is cloud. Be with me. Always."

•  "We find me."

•  "Oh. Life."

•  "Begin."

Many familiar faces drift in and out throughout, some playing characters (Cate Blanchett as Rick's ex-wife; Natalie Portman, Imogen Poots, Isabel Lucas, Freida Pinto, and Teresa Palmer as various lovers; Wes Bentley as Rick's brother, who commited suicide; Brian Dennehy as their dad; barely visible bits by Nick Offerman, Jason Clarke, Clifton Collins Jr., Joel Kinnaman, Dane DeHaan, Shea Whigham, and Kevin Corrigan as Rick's buddies or colleagues) and others playing themselves in what amounts to an arthouse ZOOLANDER 2 (Ryan O'Neal, Fabio, Joe LoTruglio, Joe Manganiello, Thomas Lennon, and Antonio Banderas, who offers this bit of sage relationship advice to Rick: "It's like flavors...sometimes you want raspberry and after a while, you get tired and want strawberry," in a way that sounds like Antonio Banderas imitating Chris Kattan imitating Antonio Banderas on SNL). TO THE WONDER was terrible, but at least it captured the beauty in the bland sameness of middle America in a vividly Antonioni-esque, RED DESERT fashion. With KNIGHT OF CUPS, shot way back in 2012 and endlessly tinkered with by its dawdling maker, Malick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki don't even find a unique visual perspective of Los Angeles, mainly because we've seen all of these places in 50,000 other movies and Malick, currently American cinema's top auteur who doesn't seem to get out much, has no new perspective to offer. Sure, Malick injects some personal pain into the story--his own brother committed suicide--but does it matter when his writing has regressed to the level of an angsty teenager who's just had his heart broken for the first time? Do we need another movie about depressed and loathsome L.A. dickbags and their first-world problems? The Malick of old could bring a singularly original perspective to this tired and played-out concept, but all the Malick of today has to offer are sleepy, enigmatic voiceovers and more California cliches than a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. Look, film snobs. Let's just cut the shit. Stop giving Malick a pass simply because of your fond memories of what he once was. (R, 118 mins)

45 YEARS
(UK/Germany - 2015)

A quiet and low-key character piece that subtly grows more tense and uncomfortable as it goes along, 45 YEARS is also a showcase for a pair of late-career triumphs for stars Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay. Rampling received an Oscar nomination for her performance as Kate Mercer, a retired schoolteacher in a small, rural British town. The film follows Kate and husband Geoff (Courtenay) over the week leading up to a swanky party with all of their friends--the Mercers never had children--celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary (a party was planned for their 40th, but Geoff's heart attack and bypass surgery led to its cancellation). On Monday of that week, Geoff receives a letter from Germany informing him that the still-preserved body of Katya, his German girlfriend who died over 50 years ago, was found in a melting glacier where she fell into a crevasse while they were mountain climbing in Switzerland. Memories from a half-century ago come back to haunt Geoff, and while Kate is initially supportive of the wave of grief overcoming her husband, she grows increasingly concerned over the week as long-buried details of his relationship with Katya come to the surface. He was contacted because the initial report listed him as her next-of-kin, which leads Kate to think Geoff and Katya were married. He insists they weren't, only that they pretended to be since it was a much more conservative era. After a failed attempt at sex due to Geoff's mind being elsewhere, she catches him rummaging around in the attic in the middle of the night, looking for pictures of Katya. Geoff starts smoking again, tries to back out of a lunch with some old work buddies, and even their friends remark that he seems distant, agitated, and preoccupied. He starts reading up on global warming and Kate finds out he's been talking to a travel agent about booking a trip to Switzerland. While Geoff is out one afternoon, Kate goes through his old photos and notebooks in some boxes stashed away in the attic and finds something that makes her question everything about their 45-year marriage.

Based on David Constantine's short story "In Another Country" and written and directed by Andrew Haigh, who cut his teeth working on the editing team of several Ridley Scott films (GLADIATOR, BLACK HAWK DOWN, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN), 45 YEARS is a fascinating, unsettling, and often deeply moving meditation on marriage, trust, love, and the disturbing realization that no matter how long or how well you've known someone, you'll never know everything about them. Kate was aware of Katya's death when she met Geoff, but it never occurred to her just how much of a presence the memory of Katya was in her marriage to Geoff, or the ways in which Katya has been the driving force in many of Geoff's--and by association, Kate's--decisions over the years. Haigh doesn't ask the audience to pick sides--indeed, there are times when Kate seems insensitive to Geoff's grief, but Geoff doesn't make it easy, yammering on about "my Katya" in ways that sometimes seem like an inadvertent slap in Kate's face. There's no doubt that Geoff loves Kate dearly, but it's just as clear that Katya has always been on his mind. In their best roles in years (probably decades for Courtenay, who's been nominated for two Oscars and was big in the mid '60s but seemed to consciously avoid the commercial pursuits of his British "angry young man" contemporaries like Richard Burton, Albert Finney, and Peter O'Toole), the two living legend stars are just superb, their body language and mannerisms expertly conveying decades of lived-in familiarity and shorthand communication, culminating a long, static shot near the end that up-ends all of that in a devastating portrait of ambiguity and uncertainty. (R, 95 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: JANE GOT A GUN (2016); BACKTRACK (2016); and #HORROR (2015)

JANE GOT A GUN
(US - 2016)

An infamously troubled production that changed directors and cinematographers and went through multiple rewrites and several cast switch-ups before filming began and then spent nearly three years on a Weinstein Company shelf before bombing in theaters, JANE GOT A GUN is rivaled only by EXPOSED and FLIGHT 7500 as the biggest catastrophe of the first quarter of 2016. A longtime pet project of Natalie Portman (one of 31 credited producers), JANE was set to go in early 2013 with director Lynne Ramsey (WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN) at the helm, and with SEVEN and frequent Woody Allen collaborator Darius Khondji as director of photography. Even before Ramsey quit over a dispute with one of the producers over final cut and Khondji left with her, co-star Michael Fassbender was forced to back out over a scheduling conflict with X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. Joel Edgerton was already cast as the villain, but that role was given to Jude Law and Edgerton was shifted over to Fassbender's vacated role. Law signed on specifically to work with Ramsey, and when she left, he followed suit. Gavin O'Connor (WARRIOR) took over as director and Bradley Cooper signed on to replace Law, but quit over a scheduling conflict with AMERICAN HUSTLE and was replaced by Ewan McGregor (now the fourth actor to be cast in the villain role). In addition, Edgerton pulled double duty by rewriting Brian Duffield's original screenplay. Filming was completed in the fall of 2013, and after multiple canceled release dates that stretched back to summer 2014, the $25 million production was finally released in theaters in January 2016, grossing just $1.5 million.

JANE GOT A GUN has all the hallmarks of compromise, clashing ideas, and behind-the-scenes rancor: released with little fanfare after languishing in limbo, a truncated running time, choppy editing, slack pacing and stretches where important scenes seem to be missing, and a couple of prominently-billed actors who are barely in the movie. In the New Mexico territory in 1871, feisty rancher Jane Hammond (Portman) tends to bullet wounds on her husband Bill (Noah Emmerich), who informs her that the gang of outlaw John Baxter (McGregor) is headed their way. She enlists the help of ex-fiance and hired gun Dan Frost (Edgerton), while flashbacks fill in the complicated backstory of the quartet of characters. It's filled with darkness and tragedy, from Civil War prison camps to sex slavery to a dead child, with Jane forced into a hellish life servicing Baxter's gang until she's rescued and whisked away by one of his men, the kind-hearted Bill. For obvious reasons, Baxter remains enraged at the couple and when some of his men spot Bill and soon pay with their lives when Bill guns them down, he leads the rest of the gang after them for revenge (it does beg the question, if Bill ran into the gang and killed some of them, how does he manage to get several days ahead of the rest, back to his ranch with time to warn Jane that they're coming?). While Bill lies immobile in bed, Jane and Dan fortify the ranch and get their guns ready for the showdown. This should've been a RIO BRAVO situation, but it plays out in almost total darkness with intermittent breaks for flashbacks and long dialogue scenes that are incoherently mumbled by Portman and Edgerton. McGregor's appearances are so fleeting and brief that he has no chance to make any kind of impact as a threatening presence, and the best you can say for it is that it looks nice for a while, but even that ceases to help by the climax since you can't see a damn thing. Nothing works in JANE GOT A GUN, a doomed project plagued by pre-production turmoil from which it never recovered. Stick with HANNIE CAULDER instead. (R, 98 mins)


BACKTRACK
(Australia/UK/UAE - 2016)

A horror movie that feels like it should've gone straight to video in 2002, BACKTRACK is a shameless ripoff of THE SIXTH SENSE, with some STIR OF ECHOES, JU-ON/THE GRUDGE, and INSIDIOUS thrown in, perhaps to prevent M. Night Shyamalan from suing. Continuing his post-Oscar slide into irrelevance, Adrien Brody offers a fairly credible accent as Peter Bower, an Australian psychologist who's still reeling over the tragic death of his daughter Evie a year earlier when she was hit by a truck while riding her bike. While Peter is at least doing slightly better than his shattered wife Carol (Jenni Baird), who can't even get out of bed, he's haunted by visions of a dead girl named Elizabeth Valentine (Chloe Bayliss), and the realization that all of the patients referred him by his mentor Duncan (Sam Neill) seem to be people who died in an accident on July 12, 1987. This prompts him to return to his childhood home and visit his estranged father (George Shevtsov), triggering memories of a traumatic incident from his teen years (lemme guess...July 12, 1987?) that may have indirectly had a hand in his daughter's eventual death nearly 30 years later. Writer/director Michael Petroni (who scripted QUEEN OF THE DAMNED, THE RITE, and THE BOOK THIEF) thinks he's being clever by introducing incredibly hackneyed elements that would be painfully obvious twists to any seasoned viewer and revealing them almost immediately, like Elizabeth Valentine's initials E.V. sounding out "Evie" and that Duncan's really a ghost, which isn't a spoiler since it's revealed 20 minutes in. But he just keeps piling on one coincidence and absurd contrivance after another until you're too busy rolling your eyes and shaking your head to catch all the post-INSIDIOUS jump scares preceded by that distinctive JU-ON croak, which is something filmmakers in 2016 are still fucking doing. Some shoddy greenscreen work and a hilariously awful CGI train derailment provide some unintentional laughs, but BACKTRACK is stale, cliched, and dated, obviously a script Petroni's had stashed in a drawer for at least a decade. Though it does provide a brief role for THE ROAD WARRIOR's Bruce Spence as a ghost, there's not much to recommend with BACKTRACK, which continues Brody's fool's quest to become Nicolas Cage. I see dead careers. (R, 90 mins)

#HORROR
(US - 2015)

Actress and artist Tara Subkoff, best known as the kidnapping victim in 2000's THE CELL, makes her writing and directing debut with this ambitious horror indie that succeeds and stumbles in equal measure, amounting to 98 uneven minutes. It's a social media-savvy slasher film that admirably doesn't approach its subject with snarky irony, but too often overstates its message to the point of harping. It's set over one night at a sleepover at the isolated Connecticut mansion of bitchy Sofia (Bridget McGarry), the 12-year-old queen of a group of Mean Girls who tear one another down in vicious hashtags using a Bejeweled Blitz-type app (Subkoff really overuses this visual motif), tagged to their endless postings of selfies. Their targets change by the minute, whether it's Cat (Hayley Murphy), whose mother recently died; overweight Georgie (Emma Adler), who they've fat-shamed into bulimia; tomboyish Francesca (Mina Sundwall), who they've labeled a "dyke," or lesser-income Sam (Sadie Seelert), who's new to their school and has cut scars on her arm from past self-harming. And these girls are friends. When Cat tears into Georgie about her weight in a way that even Sofia thinks is over the line, Cat is expelled from the party. She leaves a hysterical message on the voice mail of her preoccupied cosmetic surgeon dad (a furious Timothy Hutton), while Sofia's alcoholic, ennui-drowning mom (Chloe Sevigny) leaves the girls alone to go through the motions at an AA meeting, completely unaware that her philandering husband (Balthazar Getty) has had his throat slashed by the same maniac who's now in the house and offing the girls one by one.

Let's address the elephant in the room that is the terrible title, which does the film no favors and makes it tempting to dismiss outright. And things get off to a dubious start with the gimmicky ENTER THE VOID-style opening credits that look like a bunch of rapid-fire Candy Crush images. But amidst the catty bitchery of the mostly overprivileged, underparented kids, Subkoff manages some small accomplishments that start to add up. The massive house is a great location that allows Subkoff to really take advantage of open space in the 2.35:1 image, especially when the creepy-masked killer starts materializing anywhere in the frame. The film takes place in the dead of winter and there's a vividly chilling, uniquely Canadian-inspired coldness that's conveyed in striking imagery both outside in the snowy setting and inside in the Cronenberg-like design and decor of the house (I'm willing to bet Subkoff is a big fan of the 1983 cult classic CURTAINS). There's also a pronounced giallo influence, particularly in one Argento-styled murder that takes place in a glass-enclosed tennis court, and it's all supplemented by an unsettling, driving score by EMA. Subkoff does such a solid job with the horror elements that you wish it didn't take her 70 minutes to get to them. With the exception of the opening murder (Getty's in the film for about seven seconds), the first hour and change focuses on the Mean Girl bullying, with the girls supporting and turning on one another with no notice, exploiting weaknesses and pushing to the breaking point, and it goes on long after Subkoff has made her point. The young actresses are convincingly unlikable, and Hutton is outstanding in his few scenes, one in particular when he barrels through the house in a frothing rage searching for Cat. Hutton plays it like a vein-popping homage to Alec Baldwin, screaming at the girls and shredding them for their shallow, nasty actions, and it's a scene that's destined to become a YouTube favorite. There's a lot to appreciate in #HORROR, especially a devastating reveal at the very end, but there's a lot of missteps as well. Call it a flawed but nonetheless interesting film that shows it's worth keeping an eye on what Subkoff does next. Incidentally, nothing's made me feel older lately than seeing Sevigny, Getty, and Natasha Lyonne now playing the parents in a horror movie. (R, 98 mins, also streaming on Netflix)